The Caravan club

The idea of the single-concept restaurant might have suffered from a bit of overexposure and lazy execution in recent years, but its enduring influence on the eating out landscape is undeniable.

In the spaces where trends emerge and gain traction, early adopter consumers lavish their approval, often via social media, on the idea of doing one thing and do it well.

The very antithesis of this niche approach, Caravan has made a virtue out of having multiple specialisms; a Jack of all trades, master of all.

The five-strong concept helped make once naff fusion cookery fashionable again with its now signature well-travelled food, which mixes seasonal produce and globetrotting spices to create iconic dishes, such as blue cheese and peanut wontons.

Antipodean trendsetters

Over the course of just under 10 years in London, the New Zealander founding trio popularised the Antipodean style brunch and all-day dining that goes behind avocado on toast – not to mention pioneering the now ubiquitous flat white.

The coffee aficionados have since developed one of the leading speciality roasting operations in the UK, recently relocating to a new upscaled facility in Holloway; and alongside this added a viennoiserie for pastries and sourdough bread, and a drinks lab for their own range of non-alcoholic fermented beverages.

Probably Caravan’s most talked about recent development has been Caravan To Go, a standalone counter format operating out of Great Portland Street, with a streamlined speciality coffee offer.

All this goes some way to explaining why industry peers named Caravan winner of the evolution award at MCA’s Retailers’ Retailer awards, the highly diversified company winning widespread admiration in the sector.

“Evolution and innovation is something we’ve always put at the heart of what we do”, creative director Laura Harper-Hinton tells MCA at Caravan Kings Cross.

“We are really focused on what the next interesting and cool new things are that are happening in the food scene. We travel a lot as part of our well-travelled food thing, and when evolving the brand we always try and do something new and fresh.”

Growing food-to-go offer

In Kings Cross this evolution meant adding pizza to the menu, in Bankside they make their own charcuterie, and Fitzrovia saw the food-to-go offer evolve with pastries, Asian buns and hot grain bowls.

“We always try to be ahead of the game, stay fresh and ahead of the trends – and even set some trends,” Harper-Hinton says, with a touch of understatement.

The development of the food-to-go project has been overseen by chef-director Miles Kirby, and given this is a channel still in growth, under a trendsetting operator, it has unsurprisingly generated plenty of curiosity from peers.

“They see it as quite a departure from what we’ve done, with the quality we put into it,” Kirby says. “People are excited to see what we do next.

“It’s hard work getting it all right,” he adds. “But the reason we do it is because no one else does it, and it means we have ultra-control over the quality. It’s better than anything we can buy anywhere else.

“It means we can make decisions of what we want to put on our menu that no one else has, the fermented drinks for example. It’s awesome.”

London calling

Food to go is something Caravan has done since its early days, but it was only when the former BBC Radio 1 studio site became available that a suitable space presented itself.

Having tested and trialled the offer for the past year, and streamlined the service, they now see it as having potential for further development.

With the category having further space for growth, Caravan sees speciality coffee – or craft coffee, as they prefer to call it – as a crucial companion to this elevated offer.

“Part and parcel of doing coffee is that more retail, fast paced, grab and go side of the offer,” Harper-Hinton says.

“Timing is something people are sensitive about, especially in the mornings, and craft coffee takes longer to make, so it’s something we’ve really tuned into. We’ve learned a lot, twisted and modified the menu, and are constantly tracking timings, efficiency and the offer. Now we’re looking at opportunities for a smaller-format, retail- focused string to the bow.”

On coffee, she sees an opportunity to turn more consumers onto the premium stuff.

“There’s the notion that once people start drinking craft coffee, they realise they can’t go to Starbucks anymore. It turns you over to the side where you have to seek out a speciality craft coffee shop. It’s another great opportunity within the to-go sector – craft coffee plus – and that’s something we’re perfectly positioned to do.”

New coffee roastery

The coffee side of the business is overseen by Chris Ammerman, and alongside food is an area very much in growth.

With the new roasting facility in Holloway, Caravan is currently roasting four tonnes a week, with around 10% sold in restaurants, the rest supplied to third parties or retailed elsewhere.

“It’s growing really nicely, there’s lots of scope in all areas of the market,” Ammerman says.

“The roastery has certainly future-proofed our capacity. We have taken on some interesting accounts.”

A prestigious bit of new business is with the Savoy, while another contract is with The Office Group, which will see Caravan operate a number of counters within the workspace company, as well as producing coffee throughout the whole group.

The latter is part of a wider trend for workspace operators and corporate HQs tapping up the expertise of speciality coffee groups for their demanding and sophisticated staff, which has seen Department of Coffee work with JLL, Grind go to Facebook, and Taylor St Baristas partner with Sodexo.

People are drinking less

In terms of the restaurants, Caravan is very much a food-led business, split 60/40 between food and beverage, with some half-joking grumbling about how customers are drinking less.

“We need to crank the booze up a bit frankly,” Kirby chips in. “No one’s drinking anymore! At least summer’s on the way.”

Still, with Caravan’s drinks lab specialising in non-alcoholic fermented drinks, they have that emerging category covered too – even though it’s still in its infancy.

They produce their own ginger beer, kombucha, sodas and drinking vinegars – and are exploring potential coffee concoctions.

“It’s probably not a great commercial decision!” Kirby admits. “But it’s really a creative space for ourselves. If it works it will be an amazing thing to invest in a bigger space.

“Revenue comes in volume when you’re doing these really complicated things. It’s about the quality and being different to everyone else that makes it special.”

Next on the agenda is a restaurant launch under a new, yet-to-be-revealed concept name.

Well-travelled heritage

A partnership with Cadogan at Duke of York Pavilions, the 100-cover restaurant will take the familiar Caravan signatures, but with some fresh creativity.

“It will still play in our heritage of well-travelled and all the rest, we are not going to completely reinvent the wheel,” Harper-Hinton adds.

“It was an opportunity to do something a bit different, and it will include some of our favourites, like the cornbread.”

With a measured approach to expansion, the trio aims to keep new site design different from the last location and work with the bones of a building, avoiding the dreaded cooker cutter rollout approach.

And amid a challenging wider eating out sector, Caravan feel vindicated having stuck to their principles and grown with integrity – and they are under no pressure from private equity backer Active to change tack now.

“There’s lots of doom and gloom in the market, but also lots of opportunities that are coming up too,” Ammerman adds.

“There’s a multi-channel strategy we are going to get behind, rather than just opening another 20 5,000 sq ft restaurants. That would be suicide.”